BALLERS MEDIA "DAZE" SUNDAY BRUNCH: Holographic Beyoncé!

Mojo D shares the GMs' view of NFFA Media Days in this selfie from the end of his Sunday Brunch.

"This will be our new tradition," he said afterwards. "That sh*t was epic!"

By Soren Bernyn
FSN

It was hyped as "The Ballers' Media Daze Sunday Brunch," and the venue was packed with fantasy-sports media and legends of the game. Mojo D came rolling in a few minutes late, dressed to the nines, eschewing the hoodie and shades vibe of recent years in favor of a tailored Italian look. He dispatched a platoon of busty servers with pitchers of Bloody Mary’s, mimosas and bottles of Clase Azul tequila, pouring liberally for the “pixel-stained wretches” of the NFFA media horde. Vape girls with Baller-branded cartridges circulated, and the vibe was getting cozy.

He strolled to the mic and said calmly "hey, bitches, it's on." The lights dropped, and a twice-life-size Beyoncé appeared at the back of the room, glittering on her holographic horse, belting her current hit "Break My Soul" with enough soul-shaking bass to cause veteran writer Woody Larry to lose control of his bowels. By the last chorus, Mojo D was singing the hypnotic "You won't break my soul" refrain all by himself, illuminated by a single blue spotlight, as Beyoncé dissolved into the blue, her projection kissing Mojo D on the cheek.

When the lights slowly came up, Mojo D tilted his head back, laughed silently, then said "Everybody good? Nothing like the Queen B to get you loosened up, eh, Woody?" The next hour was a remarkably cogent and civil conversation with the mercurial bitcoin billionaire "Baller-in-Chief," who held forth on many topics, from other owners of NFFA franchises to his newly discovered extra-planetary origin story.

But he began with a lengthy exposition about his team's “Odyssey-like” migrations to many locations through the years, and what "led my heart" to move from Midtown ("you can have it, Fred Brown - if that's even your real name") to Downtown ("it's a f*cking hillbilly Bourbon Street now") to Pie Town ("Jack [White] made me an offer I couldn't refuse and it was a cool if turbulent few years") to Buena Vista ("thought we were making a difference, but ended up just making more white-people trouble for those good folks").

Starting last season, the Ballers dropped any location name at all - the only NFFA team not to be so identified ("the merch started flying off the shelves in China after that"), and have located their headquarters in The Bitcoin Bunker, an out-of-the-way section of Club Gitmo, the sovereign indigenous nation and playground of the NFFA. Mojo D leaned forward at the mention of the team’s HQ and stated plainly "I am profoundly grateful to Meta World Death, Saddam, Barris, and of course Dr Linardo -- the whole Gitmo crew have made me feel safe in probably the least safe place on the planet. In particular, Saddam’s advice helped me launch the Bitcoin-to-Bullion pipeline, which turned my crypto holdings into house money - and since the house is burning down right now, that was prescient."

Mojo D further surprised the media horde with praise for another NFFA luminary: "Sir Q Curl Sharif is a hero - his actions and support of the Ukrainian resistance are inspiring. We have adopted the blue and gold as our team colors, and are actively involved in making sure Ukraine remains free." Pressed for details, Mojo D softly said “the kinds of things that might make Russia wonder why sh*t keeps blowing up in Crimea.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and continued attacks on one of their own appears to have galvanized the NFFA ownership like never before: "Indeed it has - we can f*ck with Q Curl, but make damn sure nobody else f*cks with Q Curl. And his recent public comments about more love and oneness and opening up to the universe through psychedelics are nothing new in this league, but are hitting the mainstream in a different way - the rest of the world may be about ready to catch up to us. Which means the NFFA needs to get busy on the next iteration."

THE CHINA CARD

The Ballers and Mojo D have had long relationships - both business and personal - in China, particularly with communist party chairman Xi Jinping and Ant Group founder Jack Ma, but those days are over. Asked to comment on China-Ballers relations by R.E. Porter, the Baller-in-Chief said “we spent our season at sea a few years back, playing our home games on Xi’s aircraft carrier, and that’s what really built our fan base over there. Chairman Xi loved that sh*t, but the Party establishment saw the game as a Western bourgeois invasion. 

"Now, they weren’t wrong — but that made it tough to operate there successfully. I got to know the great humanitarian Jack Ma (billionaire founder of fintech giant Ant Group and the Chinese Amazon, Alibaba) on the boat and he offered his resources to get a higher profile for the Ballers - but once he got sideways with the Chairman, I literally had to escape out of town on my last trip to the Wuhan wet market in November 2019.”  (Ed. Note: after which he likely brought Covid-19 to the US; it is rumored Covid-19 still lives in a deep sub-basement of Club Gitmo. No one will comment on this rumor.)

It’s a shame because the Chinese market is huge - never mind the bootlegs: they’ve got 5 times the people the US has, so we sell everything we make, and probably 3 times that through the black market. Either way, there are a helluva lot of good Chinese citizens sporting Baller logos.”

Mojo D then directed his team to “make sure everybody has a full glass - Imma turn this bitch into ‘Media DAZE’.” And the media horde delivered with some atypically probing questions.

"It's on."

BITCOIN

After a long shot of Clase Azul, intrepid NFFA reporter Ariel Mutha-Tafoya went next: “You’ve been clear about your fortune in bitcoin, and there are rumors about how early you got into crypto: so, are you Satoshi Nakamoto? Did you create Bitcoin?”

The audience gasped and Mojo D looked momentarily grim, then smiled placidly and delivered a lengthy response in Japanese - we are still translating it, but apparently much of it was the haikai no renga poetry of Basho, with references to the love of butterflies, the beauty of people working together and the destructive power of the sun. More to come on this later.

CELEBRITY COACHES

The Ballers have featured a revolving door of celebrity coaches through the years - Cee-Lo Green, Jack White, Mike Tyson - and Village Green GM Dave Goodrow recently derided Mojo D’s coach decisions “as an unnecessary distraction by a pathetic fame-whore.” Asked for comment, Mojo D said “he’s not wrong… about that. 

"But I brought Goodrow into this league: he’s still the whipped puppy he has always been, trying desperately to crawl up to position himself as my nemesis. But you know what? He’s done it - I used to care about only defeating the Black Dogs, but he's pissed on my leg enough now that the Green games are circled on the locker room calendar this season. Goodrow needs to tend to his own knitting - they have back-to-back cellar-dweller seasons, the #1 draft pick for the second year in a row, and a milquetoast, D-lister coach. He keeps whining about other priorities, so it’s time for him to sh*t or get off the pot.”

CHANGES AFOOT IN THE NFFA?

When asked about potential changes to the league, the Baller-in-Chief started upbeat: “in the many years since the NFFA has been operating, it has become a near-perfect machine, largely because of the tireless work of the Commish and the gals in the NFFA office.

“However, we started something awful last year that I want to overturn: the 15th game. Although I embrace the NFFA motto ‘In chaos, veritas’, there is enough chaos without breaking the easy symmetry of everybody plays everybody twice. It’s fair and balanced - in the good way. The argument that ‘it’s more fun’ is incorrect — playing the 15th game last season caused unnecessary drama and an uneven result. The juice is not worth the squeeze there.”

R.E. Porter asked for clarification on the rumor that Mojo D was advocating for a division re-alignment, and he opined “there are now five NFFA owners living in the Hillsboro-West End neighborhood of Nashvegas, and I just wondered if there’s a new criteria to re-align based on geospatial location. You’d wind up with one Villager tossed back into the Jorge, and I bet Money would raise his hand not to change; so we’re really just swapping the Daddies and the Bakers. Not a huge change, and as Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us in Self-Reliance: ‘a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’”

THE EXTRA-PLANETARY ORIGINS OF MOJO D

And because it’s Mojo D at the Ballers’ NFFA Media Daze, the thing had to take a turn for the weird. A recent thread on the NFFA owners’ Telegram channel contained a surprising revelation from Mojo D: “during  off-season psychonautical experiences, I learned that Earth is not my home planet. I have had inklings about that my whole life, but insight into my true origins has been humbling, liberating and utterly frightening.” Asked to elaborate, Mojo D turned philosophical: “An intergalactic perspective has given me a deeper appreciation for my fellow sentient beings regardless of planetary origin, corporeal form or psychic existence — it has opened my heart and completely blown my mind in ways I cannot fully comprehend. Honestly, I am still trying to assimilate all of it. It has brought on a sense of calm that is totally foreign to me, but I think I can live like this.”

With that, he stood up, toasted the assembled crowd, knocked back whatever was in his glass and shouted “let’s have a great season!”

Beyoncé re-materialized, the music came back up loud, drinks flowed and everyone there knew: it was on.

DRUG POSITIVE At Media Days, Rodgers credits Baker culture with team, personal resurgence

London quarterback Aaron Rodgers credited the team's psychedelic therapies with fueling the Bakers' late-season run in 2021 to their first Jorge division title. 

By Ariel-Mutha Tafoya

FSN Sports

 

Before anyone could even ask him a question, Bakers’ QB Aaron Rodgers stepped up to the podium during the team’s Media Days availability and delivered an entire speech. As he looked back on the previous season, he said, it was the Bakers’ coaches and culture — both of which have always emphasized the salubrious body/mind/spirit effects of drug use — that helped him enjoy an outstanding season and propelled the team to its first-ever division title.

 

After an abysmal 6-point performance in week one of last year, Rodgers explained, he received a visit from Bakers’ coach Snoop Dogg and team owner Sir QCurl Sharif. “I thought they were about to tell me I was going to be cut,” Rodgers recalled, “but instead they started talking to me about shifting my focus toward hallucinogens to get my fantasy game to a whole different level.

 

“Snoop told me that people make jokes about the Bakers requiring players to test positive for drugs, like it’s about actually having drugs in your system at any given moment. But he explained to me that the whole culture is about being positive toward drugs, and that’s the test we have to pass if we are going to overcome ourselves on this plane of existence.”

 

With the QB’s assent, Sharif enrolled Rodgers in an ayahuasca-centered program offered by the Center for Linardist Studies, the internationally known institute founded by league founder and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr. Jorgé Linardo. 

 

Rodgers said that ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic, plant-based drink that has been part of the spiritual practice of indigenous tribes in South America for millennia, helped him to “see how to unconditionally love” himself.

 

"It's only in that unconditional self-love, that then I'm able to truly be able to unconditionally love others. And what better way to work on my mental health than to have an experience like that?" he said.

 

Rodgers said his newfound self-love translates to stronger relationships with his teammates and, in turn, better football. "I really feel like that experience paved the way for me to have the best season of my career," he said. 

 

"The greatest gift I can give my teammates, in my opinion, is to be able to show up and to be someone who can model unconditional love to them," he added. "I mean obviously it's important I play well, and show up and lead and all that stuff. They won't care about what you say until they know how much you care."

 

Standing nearby, Sharif openly wept as Rodgers spoke of unconditional love, then managed to say, “The Bakers are and always have been about love.”

 

After pausing to regain his composure, Sharif fielded questions from reporters who asked about his efforts on behalf of Ukraine, including the announcements that he would be honored on a Ukrainian postage stamp and that he had been appointed by President Volodomir Zelensky to address the United Nations General Assembly (which Sharif has done once before). “Won’t that be a distraction,” asked reporter Woody Larry, the way Vietnam was a distraction from LBJ’s War on Poverty?”

 

“On the contrary,” Sharif replied, “defending freedom from invaders is our highest calling. It’s an example of that unconditional love that Aaron described.”

 

The Bakers’ owner, who has survived three assassination attempts, including poison by Kremlin agents, and remains under a decade-old fatwa issued by Rev. James Dobson and Focus on the Family, also was asked about the risks of venturing to the U.S. from his London headquarters, particularly given the stabbing of author Salman Rushdie, a frequent guest at Sharif’s One-Eyed Pig nightclub. Security was heightened for Sharif’s appearance, even beyond the NFFA’s usual standard, with armed members of the old Fedayeen Bakers’ militia and the Beelzebubbas’ Fruit of Astarte team lining the walls of the medium room.

 

“How do you avoid living in fear that one night there will be a knock at the door that will change everything?” asked ESPN’s Ron Theworstski.

 

Before Sharif could respond, Snoop Dogg stepped up the mic and said, ominously, “Q is the one who knocks.”

 

Then Sharif was asked about his now-famous relationship with the British royal family, including his friendship with the late Prince Phillip and his apparent role, based on frequent summonses to Buckingham Palace, as an informal adviser to Queen Elizabeth.

 

“How different will the Bacchanalia be this year without Prince Phillip?” asked the BBC’s Trevor Turgidson-Nitwitt. 

 

“Who says Prince Phillip isn’t going to be there?” Sharif fired back.

 

“Can you describe your relationship with the Queen?” shouted another reporter.

 

Pausing for a moment, as if reflecting on the question, Sharif replied: “Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl, but she doesn’t have a lot to say. Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl, but she changes from day to day. I want to tell her that I love her a lot, but I gotta get a belly full of wine. Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl; someday, I’m going to make her mine, oh yeah, someday I’m going to make her mine.”

Sharif’s response seemed to stun the throng of journalists momentarily. Finally, breaking the silence, he asked, “Doesn’t anyone have a question about football?”

 

The invitation was met with sustained, sheer silence, except for the sound of a reporter’s pen dropping on the carpeted floor. After 10 awkward seconds, Snoop said, “Thank you, all,” and the Bakers’ entourage left the room.

ANIMALS INTRODUCE NEW FRANCHISE QB DTA exudes championship confidence at Media Days

Ballers QB Joe Burrow was surprised when Cambridge owner Dave the Animal called to welcome him to the Animals and ask him to appear with the team at NFFA Media Days. 

By Ariel-Mutha Tafoya
FSN Sports 

QB Joe Burrow looked confused when a reporter asked him why he was part of the Cambridge Animals’ NFFA Media Days presentation.

 

“I’m honestly not sure,” said Burrow, who last season led the Ballers to the league championship game and was that team’s presumptive keeper at the QB position. “But Mr. Animal called me yesterday and said he was proud that I was an Animal now and that I should plan on being here with my new team today.

 

“He also said that since the Animals had developed every great quarterback in the history of this league, this would take my career to a whole new level.”

 

Burrow’s surprising appearance created confusion among reporters at the event. Several tried to reach Ballers’ owner Mojo D for comment, only to learn from his text and voicemail responses that he was vacationing this week and unavailable.

 

To longtime league observers, roster surprises among the Animals are nothing new. Team owner Dave the Animal (DTA) typically announces each June that he has completed his team’s draft, two months before the official NFFA draft, but does not disclose his selections. None of the Animals’ “supplemental draft” picks, however, ever have represented the team at Media Days.

 

“We are proud to have Joe Burrow join our team and compete with the great Tom Brady and Justin Herbert as part of the 3Q system we pioneered,” said DTA. “Nobody has been able to match this innovation, so I guess I should say ‘compete’ is the wrong word to use here. The only drama left, as always, is to see which team will finish behind us in second place.”

 

“Wait,” interjected CBS Sports’ Groomer Esiason, “I thought it was the 2Q system that the Animals pioneered.”

 

“We did,” DTA replied. “And now, with the help of our Nancy II supercomputing life partner, the Animals have perfected Q3 in the next phase of our continuous quality improvement initiative. Being able to play three QBs at once, especially when the Bakers and Beelzebubbas are often playing less than one QB, gives us an insurmountable advantage and means we don’t have to tax our coaching staff with placekicker management. 

 

“It also means that we’ll need less reliance on curses to reach our objectives, which could be considered progressive even if it means that some of our long-established league traditions become obsolete.”

 

At that point, reporter Woody Larry raised his hand and said, “Speaking of curses, the Curse of the Champion not only remained undefeated last year but kept your team entirely out of the playoffs.” 

 

DTA did not flinch. “I will have to rely upon your word as a gentleman and a Vietnam veteran on this,” he replied. “As most of you know, I am traveling linearly through time from the future, so I have not yet experienced the results from the preceding season. All I can tell you is that 2022, like all of the other future years that are as yet unknown to you, is going to end in tears for the seven franchises in this league not named the Animals.”

 

During his typically rambling session, DTA fielded questions a far-ranging array of topics, from his role in the series finale of “Better Call Saul” to the news that Naomi Judd had changed her will and left her entire estate to him. “I am told we had a brief but passionate romance,” the Animal said of the late country music icon, and I am looking forward to it as I move into my younger years.”

 

According to a report that aired yesterday on TMZ, the relationship with Judd produced a son, Pinklon, who had never previously been acknowledged by either parent. TMZ also reported that a DNA test of Pinklon Helm — who took the name of his adoptive father, Levon — matched DNA of DTA that is on file at NASA.

 

“I am pleased today to learn my son’s origin story,” DTA said. “I can tell you that Pinklon the Animal — PTA, we call him — goes on to become the greatest general manager in our franchise’s proud history, surpassing that of even his half-brothers Wilder and Zuma, who we were forced to turn over to the Curse of the Champion in order to keep our remarkable title run going.”

 

Wilder the Animal was not present for the Animals’ Media Day presentation.

GOODROW CAN’T ESCAPE TRUMP Beleaguered Green owner squibs kickoff to NFFA Media Days

Green QB Patrick Mahomes was at a loss to answer questions at NFFA Media Days about the FBI's recent search of team owner Dave Goodrow's home and nightclub.

By Ariel-Mutha Tafoya

FSN Sports

Village Green chairman Dave Goodrow may have intended to kick off the league’s vaunted Media Days event by discussing his team’s prospects for the upcoming season. Instead, he found himself bombarded with reporters’ questions about his involvement with Donald Trump, who formerly owned a minority interest in the Green.

For Goodrow’s team, the timing of Media Days could not have been more inopportune. On Tuesday, when FBI agents conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, they also executed warrants on Goodrow’s Hillsboro Village home and his nightclub, the Goodrow-a-Go-Go. Sources within the Bureau, who spoke with FSN on condition of anonymity, said that agents hauled away numerous boxes of documents from both of the Nashville searches. One box, they said, appeared to include three Dead Lombardi trophies belonging to Ballers owner Mojo D. Another box was filled with publicity photos of exotic dancers seeking jobs at “The Go-Go.” A third box, labeled “Tax Documents,” appeared to be filled with loose receipts from liquor stores and nail salons.

Though agents had not completed a review of the seized records as of Thursday, they reported one previously undisclosed bit of information. In early 2020, the documents showed, a cash-strapped Trump offered to sell his Florida resort to the Green’s owner, who would rename it Mar-a-Goodrow. Negotiations apparently broke down over Goodrow’s insistence that Trump not be allowed to live on the property and that his gold-plated toilet be uninstalled and sent to the Smithsonian.

Seized financial documents also indicated that, during his ownership tenure with the Green, Trump had placed a valuation of $2 trillion on the franchise, dwarfing the value of other professional sports organizations. Even after Trump sold his shares, Goodrow used the artificially inflated valuation to obtain lines of credit he accessed to buy up prime downtown, Midtown and SoBro real estate in Nashville. “Essentially,” said New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who is prosecuting Trump for alleged financial crimes, “it appears that Goodrow took advantage of Trump’s fraud to run his archrival Mojo D out of his team’s last three locations by buying up all the land around him.” It was not yet clear, James added, whether Goodrow’s actions may have constituted a crime.

In New York City on Wednesday, Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment whenever he was asked a question about his involvement with the Green.

“The real crime was what they did to a tremendous owner and American like Dave Goodrow,” Trump tweeted after his grand jury appearance. “I know that he will be loyal to the man who made him a champion — me — and will not participate in the Deep State and Elite Media witch hunt that is being waged on MAGA Patriots right now.”

Goodrow, who has tried to distance himself from Trump since buying out his former partner, did not initially appear before the media on Thursday, leaving the presentation to Coach Stuart Smalley and QB Pat Mahomes. Neither could escape a volley of reporters’ questions about the team’s owner and Trump.

“On a scale of 1 to 1,000, how much of a distraction is Goodrow’s entanglement with Trump going to be for the Green this year?” asked longtime beat writer Woody Larry, who reminded everyone that he is a combat veteran. “Will it haunt you the way Vietnam haunted LBJ?”

ESPN analyst Troy Fakeman asked Mahomes, “Are you troubled to learn that the Green are valued at $2 trillion but you only got paid a relative pittance?”

“Do you think Goodrow will go to jail?” asked local journalist Joe Biddle.

“You’re good enough and smart enough and people like you,” said Fox Sports’ Skip Clueless to Smalley, “but are you good enough and smart enough to coach the team through this crisis?”

After Smalley and Mahomes struggled to answer questions for nearly an hour, Goodrow stunned reporters by approaching the podium dressed in an outfit, complete with buffalo-horn headdress, like that worn by the so-called Q-Shaman inside the US Capitol on January 6. As he sauntered in, playing air guitar, “Helter Skelter” blared over the PA system.

“Too soon, bitches?” said the Green owner, amid audible gasps from around the room. “You thought this was all going to be businesslike? Welcome to the NFFA. I’d be happy to take any of your questions now, but it looks like we’re out of time and I’m out of patience. See you on the field!”

Goodrow and Woodrow in happier times.

With that, the media availability ended abruptly. Hours after the event, FSN learned that Goodrow had not appeared at Media Days after all. Instead, reporters were punked by his twin brother, Woodrow, a Nashville-based accountant and professional blackjack player who has been known to pass himself off as his famous older (by three minutes) sibling. 

“He sure fooled me,” Smalley said. “But it’s hard to tell them apart except for Dave’s ‘Butterflies Are Free’ tattoo, which is normally covered up except when he’s partying.”